


a place in my heart (for you)

by Aramley



Category: The Eagle (2011)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:18:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A storm's coming. Marcus, Esca, and the things they build together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a place in my heart (for you)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://riventhorn.livejournal.com/59772.html?thread=853116#t853116) as commentfic. Title from Open Up by Editors.

The clouds banked up over the horizon are dense and ugly, and the high wind brings air that smells sharp, like thunder. Marcus casts a distrustful look at the hills, behind the ridge of which lies the town where Esca is. Last month, last market day, it was Marcus' turn to go, but last month a final unseasonable vestige of summer had still been warming the land under cloudless skies. A week ago Marcus took out his winter cloak for the first time, earning Esca's fond derision ("Romans," he'd said, smiling, "you're all soft as children."). If the clouds had piled up earlier Marcus might have persuaded Esca not to slip out from their bed that morning in the pre-dawn grey. He's learning the subtle arts of persuasion; this, or Esca humours him. Either way, Marcus gets his own way more often than not, except when Esca employs similar counter-tactics. Marcus finds himself a softer touch than usual where Esca is concerned, though he does not entirely mind this. But this morning Esca slipped away with a kiss to Marcus' throat and another to his mouth, before Marcus was awake enough to reciprocate.

"I'll be back before dark, if I can," Esca had murmured against Marcus' skin, and was gone.

And that leaves Marcus here, half-heartedly going about the farm chores with an eye always on those thunderheads purpling ominously between Esca and him.

-

Before long the cloud banks are veined with lightning in their bellies, thunder rolling towards the little farm like ocean breakers. Marcus sets his jaw against the insistent thought of Esca and sets about readying the farm. He knows what to do, can run the farm almost as well as Esca now, though the learning curve was steep. On the old place in Etruria there had been slaves, and so he had known nothing of the hardest labours. Esca will have nothing but hired boys, and those only rarely, but he's a good if exacting teacher and Marcus has the animals secured and safe before the first curtains of rain draw down.

By high afternoon it feels as though the storm is some huge monster, squatting with its purple-grey belly pressed low to the house. Marcus has never heard thunder like it. He feels the crack of it in his bones, and the pots rattle over the hearth-fire at the loudest. The dog, Madoc, lies with his nose against Marcus' ankle, whining occasionally. He's not much more than a puppy still, long-limbed, big-pawed and wolfish in the British style, but even Marcus can see that there's some strain of good hunting stock in the mixed blood that makes up this pup, who belies those nobler elements of his ancestry by attempting to crawl into Marcus' lap. Marcus laughs through the tightness in his chest and gets an arm around the wiry armful.

"I know," he says, smoothing the dog's ears flat against his sleek head. "But he's safe in town. Esca won't try to come back in this weather. He'll spend the night in town and come back - come back tomorrow," Marcus finishes, after the interruption of another Olympean thundercrack. "He's safe in town," he says, again, and Madoc pushes his cold nose against Marcus' throat and huffs, as though he believes Marcus and is reassured.

-

The little house holds out beautifully against the onslaught, and tucked snugly inside Marcus feels a stir of pride in this thing that he and Esca have built together with their own hands. The result is something between Roman and British, like so much else about the way they live now. There are no mosaics or hypocausts, but the wattle and daub walls are plastered inside and white-washed simply. The floors are beaten earth. The roof is thatch and Marcus had been insisting that they reroof in Roman tile come the spring, but he thinks now that he might not bother with the inconvenience, the thatch is holding up so well. He thinks about how pleased and yes, smug Esca will look when Marcus tells him, the things he might say. It would not be a lie to say that he looks forward to hearing them.

In the house that Esca and Marcus have built there is one bedroom, and one bed.

The thunderstorm blots out the sun, and night comes early. _I'll be back before dark_ , Esca had said, _if I can_. Marcus thinks of him safe in town, speaking British with his friends, smiling and laughing.

-

It's late before the worst of the storm's fury is spent. Madoc is asleep on the warmed hearthstones, chasing something in a dream. Marcus lays aside the little toy he's been carving to occupy his hands and stretches, stiff with being indoors all day.

Outside, mud is sloughed across the yard and the rain gutters are choked full of rubbish. Marcus thinks of the work tomorrow to clear up, the day spent shovelling mud, digging out ditches, checking walls and fences. But tomorrow Esca will be home. Marcus smiles to himself, thinking of that and how he'll make Esca do the dirtiest work as penance.

In the outbuildings the thatch has done its job as beautifully as in the house, and the stores are dry and the animals only a little skittish from the thunder. Marcus puts out feed and spends a few minutes with the horse, smoothing her hot muzzle and letting her nibble corn from his palm.

He's slogging back to the house when he hears the sound of a horse somewhere through the rain in the direction of the drove road. Through the darkness and drizzle he can make out the shape of a horse led by a man, and he squints through the rain, wondering what fool would be out in such weather before the figures draw closer into the yard and the light spilling out of the house and he sees: Esca.

Esca is more mud than man, so miserably wet that he looks like he might be drenched deeper than his skin, down to the bones and marrow, but through the mud and rainwater a soggy, wry smile surfaces for Marcus when they're close enough.

"Esca," Marcus says, for lack of anything to say that could accurately express his feelings of absolute bafflement.

"She took a stumble crossing the stream on the way back," Esca says, indicating the horse. His voice is tight with the effort of keeping his teeth from chattering. "I didn't want to put any weight on the foot."

"You idiot," Marcus says. He reaches out and curls a hand into the sodden neck of Esca's cloak, almost as though to reassure himself that he isn't dreaming. His dreams tend not to paint Esca freezing and skin-soaked, though, or to include quite so much mud and the chilly drips of water trickling down the neck of his own hooded cloak.

Esca looks put-upon. "Do you think we might save the lecture until I'm in a fitter state to ignore it?"

-

Marcus sees to the horse while Esca goes in to warm himself by the fire, and when Marcus returns he's already stripped and wrapped up in a thick blanket, petting Madoc's ecstatic head. Marcus should be angry with him - about the horse, about doing anything so stupid as travelling in a storm that bad - but Esca looks small and he's shaking, just a little, and Marcus can't bring himself to feel anything other than a kind of enormous gratitude that he's here. It used to disturb him, the strength of the feelings that Esca inspires. It is un-Roman to think so much of another person, to have one's happiness linked so inextricably to their presence. To love. But they carve out new spaces between them that are large enough to encompass the contradictions of British and Roman, and in these they build things that are more than the sum of both.

Esca turns to look at him, brushing strands of wet hair out of his eyes. He says, playfully, "Am I going to get my lecture now?"

Marcus shakes his head, taking a seat opposite Esca at the hearth. "I think you've probably been through enough punishment for one day."

"I can take care of myself," Esca says.

"So can I," says Marcus. "Why did you come back today? You didn't trust me to take care of the farm?"

"What? No," says Esca, frowning. "Don't think that, it's not true."

"Why else would you come all this way back here in that storm?"

Esca watches Marcus for a moment, solemn and thoughtful at first, softening into something approaching a smile.

"You'll laugh at me if I tell you," he says.

"Try me," says Marcus, narrowing his eyes at Esca. The effect may be lessened by the way that his gaze lingers along the pale curve of Esca's bare neck where it disappears into the folds of the cloak.

Esca picks up Marcus' little carving from the floor where he left it. He smiles properly, turning the horse this way and that, although the carving is still rough and half-formed.

"Who's this for?" he asks.

"Rufilius' son, in town," Marcus says, and, "Don't imagine I'm so easily distracted."

Esca laughs then, putting the horse down carefully. "I was worried about you," he says, finally.

"About me coping with the farm?"

"No," Esca says, fixing Marcus with a soft, half-amused look. "About you. About - I imagined the most terrible things. Floods and mudslides. Lightning strikes, I don't know. I can't ever remember a storm like this, and you can't be used to this kind of thing back in Italy. So."

Marcus can't help laughing. "You thought I was going to get swept away in a mudslide."

"No," says Esca. "But, well. I thought I ought to check. If I ever met a person who could get swept away in an autum storm, it's - " but Esca can't continue, because Marcus is too busy kissing him.

-

Esca's skin is still cold, his hair still damp when Marcus drags him into bed and folds him close. Esca's eyes are too heavy-lidded and his kisses too languid for Marcus to try anything more than to chase away the lingering chill with the flat of his palms across Esca's arms, his shoulders, the curve of his spine. Esca presses close, unashamed, mouthing sleepily at Marcus' neck when he can't muster up the energy for anything else. After his starved years of slavery he's still touch-hungry, but it's a weakness he relents to only when his control slips, which means only with Marcus. Marcus loves these unguarded moments, and curls tighter around Esca, glad of being bigger if it means he can cover Esca with his body and warm him that way. Esca sighs out a long hot breath against Marcus' collarbone and settles into the easy rhythm of sleep, one hand still fisted tightly in Marcus' tunic.

Outside, the storm dies away, softening until it's a sound buried beneath the sweeter sound of Esca's slow breathing. In the main room, Madoc snores contentedly. Esca shifts closer in his sleep and Marcus lets himself drift in the shared warmth of their bodies, their home.


End file.
